[CPEO-MEF] PFAS: "Maine’s toxic firefighting foam shipped out of state to poor areas"

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Maine’s toxic firefighting foam shipped out of state to poor areas
Newly released records show more than 22,000 gallons of PFAS-laden foam and rinse water recovered after the recent Brunswick spill were trucked to waste incinerators in low-income communities far from Maine's borders.


By Penelope Overton
Portland Press Herald (ME)
December 29, 2024

In the days following Maine’s worst forever chemical spill, crews scrambled to clean up tens of thousands of gallons of toxic firefighting foam from the former Brunswick Naval Air Station before it could taint nearby private drinking wells or the public water supply.

Nobody cared what crews did with the waste, so long as they took it far, far away from Maine.

“Not many questions were asked,” admits Steve Levesque, who took over as acting head of the agency in charge of redeveloping the base after the spill. “It was like, just get it out of here, you know? We wanted it gone as fast as possible, so it couldn’t hurt anyone.”

About half of it wound up at an incinerator three miles from the Ontario home of 2nd-generation farmer Lori Vokes. She doesn’t know much about forever chemicals, but she can see the incinerator smokestack and smell its sprawling landfill from her white brick farmhouse.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.pressherald.com/2024/12/29/what-should-maine-do-with-its-toxic-firefighting-foam/

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)




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